


Madness is catching

by Superbanana



Category: Call the Midwife
Genre: F/F, I am slightly too into these two ladies, I need a better hobby, Pupcake - Freeform, patsy is a fool, retro lesbians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 22:39:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10580958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Superbanana/pseuds/Superbanana
Summary: Another one, I promise this is it for today although I might just keep going with this. Adding little one-shots about these two.





	

Patience Mount is slowly being driven mad. The wanting feelings that creep up unbidden by her at the slightest provocation these days are testing her resolve even as her mouth dries up and her heart hammers into her rib cage like a frightened bird.

Patsy cannot lie to herself and say she's confused as to the reason why. Not confused, not that. No. Simply because there is very little mystery as to why these events have occurred so frequently in recent times. Indeed, it could be very easily explained by two simple words. Delia. Delia Busby. Delia Busby who is short and rosy skinned and smiles at everyone. Delia who speaks with a welsh lilt and wears her stocking seams crooked all the time. Delia Busby who has thick brown hair that never fully behaves underneath her nurses cap despite the many bobby pins rammed into it so that small tendrils coil around the nape of her rather graceful neck before the shifts have even begun. Patsy is jealous of those strays hairs and cannot even find it in her to be embarrassed by such a stupid, overly sentimental statement. In fact, Patsy has spent far too many evenings day dreaming of how she wants to wrap her own hands through that messy, disorganised, glorious bun as she pulls the small woman's head back to kiss and bight and suck that neck. 

It would be amusing to Patsy when she looks back on all of this one day she assures herself. Until the next day of course when Delia, who's hips always sway when she walks in a way that makes Patsy's knees feel shaky, drops a tray of paper work from Matrons desk onto the floor. In her haste to tidy the mess before she's discovered Delia bends down to shuffle them back together. And, with the streak of poor luck that has become a staple in her life Patsy would, of course, have to choose this moment to rush through the door. For a brief moment they are thrown together with Patsy stumbling against the curved backside of her fantasy with her hands flung out capturing those hips Delia loves to swing so very very much. Patsy feels sweat break out on her forehead at the contact, the shoots of electricity on each splayed out pad of her fingers where they touch the girl who is shockingly warm and hard and soft under her grip. Patsy immediately is forced to stifle an insane urge to hold just a little firmer, to pull the girl closer in and thanks her lucky stars that she is not a man. The moment passes and their faces are red with rushing blood. Later though, much later, after Patsy has muttered her apologies to a girl she has yet to properly hold a conversation with without appearing unreasonably cold or embarrassingly tongue tied and the sounds of Matron shouting down the ward for; "someone to explain why the papers on my desk have been moved!" Patsy cannot help but consider that it was odd Delia had seemed to be as embarrassed as she was. She was definitely sure she must have imagined the way the girl had closed her own hands around Patsy's, as though to pull her in tighter for fraction of a second. It was a fantasy she could peruse in her own head. Nowhere else. Definitely.

Except fantasies are so very hard to remain in one's head when they are living breathing people who seem to be sent from somewhere terrible to torment you. Delia Busby was everywhere it seemed. She was at the pictures with the other nurses on Saturday nights they all had off; sliding down the row for her seat and always, always, somehow brushing past Patsy. It wasn't overt, could easily have been considered casual contact between acquaintances but for the fact that Patsy felt each touch on her skin like a brand. Exquisite torture. Delia's hand brushing against her forearm, her shoulder, her knee and once, bizarrely, her ear as the girl had groped for her seat half way through a film in the dark. All accidents, innocent moments. And, somehow, the girl managed to do it every single time and each time something within Patsy clenched hotly even as she plastered a tight, friendly smile onto her face. It was the sweetest of tortures but Patsy had to admit she couldn't be alone in thinking it was faintly ridiculous how many bathroom breaks the woman could possibly need over the course of a two hour film. 

Delia Busby was in the canteen at a quarter to 8 on a grey morning in February as well looking gloriously mussed, with her cap torn away and placed on the table beside her; fiddling with the bread of her cheese sandwich and smiling at the new doctor politely (definitely just politely Patsy assured herself firmly) as the presumptuous young man spoke animatedly to her about who only knew or cared what. Delia has a wonderful smile, the sort of smile that makes you want to smile back, it's one of her many charms, it's also possibly a contributing factor to why Patsy has spent some time quietly raging at Mr Robbins in the third bed from the left in her head after he attempted to squeeze the girls bum around midnight last night on shift. The girl had flinched and rubbed at the skin uselessly behind the desk of the nurses' station and when she had noticed Patsy watching - just observing the facts and not at all tracking the movement of the woman's hand against the soft fabric she had seemed to freeze; her eyes the dark blue of a Welsh sky and Patsy had very nearly stabbed a catheter rather than a no.8 needle into the matchstick arm of Mr Bushkin. 

Delia is still talking to that damned doctor. Delia has dimples and last week Patsy watched her whispering something Patsy could tell she damn well shouldn't be to one of the others when Matron was teaching them exactly how one should extract a test sample from a jar of urine and had been helpless to notice how she had pushed her tongue behind her teeth as she grinned devilishly and the way the faint pink of it flashed behind her very even teeth as she did so. Patsy has spent a long time considering that tongue. So much so that the thought of it makes the hairs on her arms stand on end. And Delia is still smiling at the doctor. Delia doesn't have a boyfriend yet, although Patsy has to admit to herself that it can't be too much longer until that soothing truth becomes a falsehood. Patsy tries to concentrate on the textbook laid out in front of her as she slowly lifts her bread roll to her mouth. Except Delia is STILL talking to the doctor and the bread roll is held some distance from Patsy's mouth as the man reaches out to stroke Delia's hand. Patsy can feel the soft, doughy bread become solid as it is clenched, very tightly, between her suddenly tightened fingers. The text book in front of her is not a big enough distraction and Patsy tries to leave without troubling the pair. The Pair! She feels the bitterness in the pit of her stomach even as she vows to herself that Delia Busby will soon be a name she barely remembers.

Except for the fact that less than two hours later Delia Busby is standing outside of Patsy's door; asking to come in and biting her lip as she picks at a few flecks of cotton lint on the seam of her dress. She looks nervous and Patsy feels a thrill of anger at herself that she's noticing. Still noticing this frustratingly interesting woman despite the internal lecture she's been giving herself as she sips on the whiskey she's been hiding under a loose floorboard in her room. She stifles the urge to reach out and capture those twitching digits. Delia has lovely hands... No, she tells herself sternly. Had. In the past when Patsy was interested in such things. Not now of course because Patsy does not stare at girls who let doctors touch them over cafeteria tables... The lint is gone but the fingers are still fidgeting, worrying at the edge of her rather endearingly vivid yellow cardigan sleeve now. She feels herself sigh softly. Even when Patsy is beyond irrationally jealous she can't lie about this to herself because Delia really does have lovely hands. It's not like she's done anything wrong Patsy reminds herself for what feels like the hundredth time in her head. Delia is not the one who should be feeling disgusted with herself right now. Her fingers are still tugging at the sleeve. It'll stretch if she carries on. Her hands really are lovely. She's got the neat, short, tidy nails you'd expect from anyone who could be expected to scrape sick out of a stainless steel bowl fifteen times a shift. Patsy has had dreams about those hands that would make Delia blush and stammer. Patsy's pictured it all too many times. Fantasy's are fine though. Fantasies are safe. No one has to know what she's thought except for her. 

Patsy hears herself tell the girl to come inside although no conscious decision has been made in her mind and then Delia Busby is hovering in her bedroom. The fantasy shifting dangerously into reality. Patsy has wanted this girl in her bedroom for months. Has considered the most outrageous scenarios in her head and now Delia Busby with her soft hair and warm, swaying hips and neat hands are in her bedroom. Shockingly solid and real. Now Delia Busby is looking at her with a shrewd expression Patsy has yet to see before.  
"-You looked upset earlier. I wanted to see if you were alright... " Her voice is so sweet Patsy wants to sit down and listen to her talk to her for hours. But Delia Busby is in her bedroom looking at Patsy with eyes that suddenly seem a touch too knowing for this scene and Patsy can feel parts of herself becoming warm and- "Pats, are you... Ok, I mean. You looked a touch strange and you left your book on the table." 

Patsy eyes the woman's figure that is conspicuously not disturbed by a great whacking textbook before answering, willing her voice to sound light and hearty and wincing slightly at the clipped tones that tumble out instead, "Of course I am, I just remembered an errand I'd forgotten. Matron asked me to clean out the sluice' she's inventing madly now but the girl might believe her, everyone knows Patience Mounts great love affair with the medical grade detergents, 'she'd have my guts for garters if I didn't finish the job. You know what a stickler she is for cleanliness". Practically next to Godliness she thinks to herself ruefully.

"Oh', Delia's suddenly a bit closer than she had been a moment before, Patsy can smell her perfume. A powdery smell mixed with antiseptic. Patsy loves it; clean and sweet. ' I just thought you might have seen me talking to Michael.' Delia's just taken another step and they're an arm's length apart now. Her eyes are ridiculously blue and she's drawn kohl pencil around the bottom lid. She looks like she's waiting for something, her head tilted just slightly and her tongue is pushing against her teeth. That tongue. Patsy suddenly feels a bit woozy. Delia's still talking though -'I just thought you might have seen see, because you always seem to be watching me and, Pats, would you tell me why that might be.." She tails off there, leaving Patsy room to answer. Her eyes are searching Patsy like they could see inside her skull. Like she knows... And Patsy understands, far too late, that it is perfectly possible that while she has been watching Delia, Delia has been watching her and Patsy is suddenly breathless for completely new and terrifying reasons. Patsy can feel a harsh kind of weight pushing on her clavicle. It's not panic so much as numbness as the blood drains from her face. Delia sodding Busby sodding knows. "I don't- Delia, it's not... I don't." Delia's smiling up at her. She's so pretty, Patsy wonders if mice think cats are pretty before they're ripped apart. 

"It's just.. if you wanted to look at me more often, on our own sometime I thought that might be... nice". Delia Busby shuffles forward just a touch more and Patsy can feel her heart shattering in her chest which is jarring because a moment before she could have sworn it had taken its very last beat. And Delia Busby is smiling at her and Patsy can feel something like a smile twisting at her lips.

"That would be... I'd like that". She sounds a bit too hoarse for a healthy woman who's done nothing more tiring than stand in the middle of a room. Delia Busby is still smiling at her and then Patsy can feel those delicious hands reaching out to stroke her arms. Branding her. Delia Busby has the most beautiful lips Patsy decides as they loom in front of her and then Delia is kissing her. 

Patsy decides that being mad is alright. Delia Busby is just as crazy as it turns out. Maybe... maybe it might all be ok.


End file.
